Follett Press Releases

New ‘Managed Services’ Offering From Follett Designed to Help K-12 Administrators Save Time, Money, Space

MCHENRY, IL,Oct 5, 2015 –
Follett announced this week it is unveiling a new offering – Managed Services – directed at administrators and designed to help districts eliminate both routine and seasonal tasks involved in managing resources, ultimately saving significant time, money and space.

“We are excited as Managed Services is a brand-new offering from Follett, and comes in response to educators telling us they are spending too much time on operational activities, which takes attention away from their primary goal of student learning,” said Tom Schenck, president, Follett School Solutions. “Our customized program provides valuable outsourced services for administrators when they’re lacking the resources – staffing, facilities or time – to efficiently and effectively run their district.”

Follett’s Managed Services enables districts to:

efficiently locate, count and barcode school assets by using Follett’s team of experts to execute physical inventory and barcoding projects;

quickly order, receive, reconcile and distribute new resources within a district with new product deployment services;

effectively open, close or relocate schools and libraries with facility management services;

utilize Follett’s state-of-the-art warehouse as a scalable warehousing solution for the short- and long-term storage of district resources; and

solve current issues and proactively avoid future problems by building sustainable practices to ensure district policies are followed and investments are maximized.

In select markets where Follett has rolled out the new service, the results have been striking. One such example is Community United School District 300 (D300) in Algonquin, Ill., which two years ago witnessed one of its schools lose as much as $100,000 in textbooks in just 12 months.

“You must step back and have the courage to say we have to do this better,” said Susan Harkin, CFO of D300. “At the heart of all this was that our students weren’t starting the school year with the proper materials.”

With the help of Follett's Managed Services, D300's textbook management is now running on all cylinders. After an initial consulting phase, Follett’s Managed Services team took a physical inventory of every book in the school and barcoded copies that needed barcode labels. The district then took advantage of Follett’s Warehousing Services and relocated the majority of books in their district warehouse to Follett’s facility. The district now operates as a lean organization that knows what they own, who is responsible for it, and where it is located.

The same school that experienced significant textbook setbacks lost only one book during the year following Follett’s involvement. Overall, the district has saved more than $500,000 and Harkin predicts savings of at least $200,000 annually moving forward.

For more than 140 years, Follett has been a trusted partner to pre-K and K-12 schools, districts, and college campuses, taking care of the critical details that make it easier for schools to run, teachers to teach and students to learn. Every day, Follett serves over half of the students in the United States, and works with 70,000 schools as a leading provider of education technology, services and print and digital content. Follett is higher education's largest campus retailer and a hub for school spirit and community, operating more than 1,150 local campus stores and 1,600 virtual stores across the continent. Headquartered in Westchester, Illinois, Follett is a $2.6 billion privately held company.

Follett is the largest provider of educational materials and technology solutions to PreK-12 libraries, classrooms, learning centers and school districts in the United States, and a major supplier to educational institutions worldwide. Follett distributes books, reference materials, digital resources, ebooks and audiovisual materials, as well as pre-owned textbooks. Follett also is one of the leading providers of integrated educational technology for the management of physical and digital assets, the tracking, storing and analyzing of academic data, and digital learning environment tools for the classroom focusing on student achievement.